A swindling Queens couple who rented apartments and then regularly failed to pay for them were given long-term rent-free accommodations yesterday – in prison.

Queens Supreme Court Judge John Latella sentenced Nancy Jace – already on probation for duping elderly dudes out of $250,000 in cash – to 8 to 24 years behind bars.

Her husband Danny Nicholas got 7 to 16 years for his role in the rent- denying scheme that bilked landlords out of $86,000.

The sentences followed pleas for mercy from the pair.

“I’m so sorry if I hurt these people. I didn’t know I was hurting them. I couldn’t afford my rent,” claimed Jace, 39, who wore a dingy jacket and messy ponytail to court.

“I’m not saying I’m an angel,” Jace added. “But I’m not that bad.” She said she was “an excellent mama” to her five children.

Nicholas, 39, asked the judge if he was religious. “God told us to live proper,” he said of his recent conversion from a life of crime. “I pray in Jesus’ name that the sentence is his will and no one else’s.”

Unmoved, Latella threw the book at them.

Over a span of eight years beginning in 1997, the couple rented apartments in Bayside, Flushing, Fresh Meadows and Maspeth promising six landlords they’d pay rents ranging from $1,200 to $2,000 a month.

After moving in, they would refuse to pay and filed fraudulent bankruptcy petitions – halting the eviction process for months and, sometimes, years.